Upright Ape at Inverloch – summer 2018:

Standing here at the edge,

the wind throwing grains of sand into my flesh

as if I am the vacant space the universe

explodes upon,

the sound of the ocean,

unending howl of creation

as land is torn, broken down,

reformed in places unseen.

I remember when I was sixteen,

innocent except in the mastery of the pain

that sixteen years had yielded,

beauty seen

as if from behind a window;

always there and not held,

touched but swift to fade,

like a snowflake beneath the heat

of skin and desire.

The water burying my feet in homage

to time’s unending carving of the tomb

for flesh and bone to be hollowed out and found

in some distant time, perhaps then lifted

to some stranger’s lips, lung-wind

blown to make music of all that I was once

and has been forgotten.

Life — the ocean of individual droplets,

useless unless considered

as a single form coming and going,

changing the world, reorganising it,

breaking it, and — if wisdom wins —

repairing ourselves and the destruction

we bring for some future generation

of bone blowers, their hands, each of five digits,

cradling all that we have held.

What song did the Siren sing?

( for Robert Graves)

Odysseus strapped to the mast

            his back braced against the wood

as if it

            bore the memory of his mother’s arms

must have heard secret words…lured then by the line

those words constructed to ultimately bind — else

only the music itself was the trap

and then what need the Siren

when any conch shell

or rightly strung instrument

might do?

So what did the words admit when admitted

           

did the words hint at the heel

that drew the arrow;

the heel itself drawn to that fate

by the wiles of the man now bound

to the mast — back further still

to when the heel

hid within the robes of a woman

and then what name did his cousin call

when the name we know could not be used?

to the man with rope that bound

and wax in the ears of his fellows

so that they could not hear

then steer towards the swallowing shallows?

And ever after,

asleep beside his re-claimed wife

or alone hunting the edges for stray wolf

or beside the hearth, retelling stories into the night —

did the words ring

then deep within

the psychic links

the chain that clinks;

dark-coated, magnificent Mare of night’s ghostly reminder

that called him back to that rocky shore

cluttered with the hearts

of broken men

with tears that litter their dreams

their eyes staring into the embers

their minds unwinding

back to the arms of the Eternal Singer —

was She ever mine to love?